Last weekend saw the second comic book adaptation to top the box office this year, the first being the big hit Iron Man. There will be at least one more of those this year with The Dark Knight coming next month. This week features a television adaptation in the top spot in Get Smart, the second of that kind to do so this year. Sex and the City took the prize last month.
Get Smart took the top spot in easy fashion, providing Steve Carell with the biggest opening of his career. The best part about its taking of the top spot is that it is actually a good movie. It is not great by any stretch, but it is funny, has some nice action, and does not come off as your typical bumbling spoof film; it has a certain level of intelligence behind it. This is definitely worth spending some time with.
There was one other new release to enter nationwide cineplexes, Mike Myers' comedy The Love Guru. It pulled in below expectations and has already been labeled a failure. You know what? I am happy for it. As much as I like Myers and as good as some of his past movies have been, this one is just not funny. I sat there in the theater waiting, hoping for it to get funny, but it never did. Now, this is just anecdotal evidence, but I seemed to be the minority as a large portion of the quite full theater seemed to be having a blast. This fact led me to be surprised at how poorly it fared overall in terms of box office. I suspect that this will sink pretty quickly over the next couple of weeks.
As for the returning films, The Incredible Hulk suffered a steep 60% drop, but managed to hang on to the second place finish. Hopefully this will level off as this is a much better film than that drop would indicate. The same can be said for The Happening, which fell over 65%. This film is better than that, although I can see, and completely understand, the polarizing effect it and its writer/director can have.
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